Dear Ian,
Ours was a strange friendship, pretty much limited to long journeys back and forth to London for year after year, but it was a friendship that meant much to me, enriching and enlivening what would otherwise been a banal, mindless trudge. Our conversations took us to many places, serious stuff about the meaning of creativity and invention, our shared joy at watching our children emerge into the adult world, the sheer bloody grind of daily clashes with bureaucracy, incompetence and stupidity but also the students and colleagues that made it worthwhile in the end. That seriousness was more than matched by your humour and a ready wit that sparkled across the carriages. I shall miss your outrageousness and your filthy tongue and its effect on so many of our pompous, harrumphing, fellow passengers. When those skills came together the result could be electric. I shall never forget that 45 minute rage at the idiocy and attitude of David Willetts and his policies that lasted from Fratton to Hazlemere. It was a rage that was informed and eloquent but yet so bloody funny that complete strangers were reduced to tears of laughter. Yours was a rare skill that showed us that intellect does not have to be clothed in pomposity and pretence and that passion and joy for the things and people that really matter is what makes life worthwhile in the end.